The Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedure allows an individual who has U.S. tax filing obligations but is not residing in the U.S. to come into compliance with their filing obligations for foreign assets and avoid any failure-to-file, failure-to-pay, accuracy-related, information return or FBAR penalties.
To qualify for the program, an individual must meet the applicable non-residency requirement and must have failed to report income from and pay tax on a foreign financial asset and failed to file an FBAR. The failure must have been the result of non-willful conduct such as negligence, inadvertence, mistake or conduct as a result of a good faith misunderstanding of the law.
To satisfy the non-residency requirement, an Individual (U.S. citizen or Green Card holder) must, in any one or more of the most recent three years for which the tax deadline has passed (or properly applied for extended due date), (1) Not have a U.S. abode and (2) have been physically outside the United States for at least 330 full days.
The non-residency testing should be done for each year; if you satisfy the non-residency requirement for any one of the three years during the applicable lookback period, you are eligible for the program. Meaning, even if someone failed to report for the last three years and was in the United States full time for two of those years, as long as there is one year where they were outside the United States for 330 or more full days, they would be eligible for the program.
